11:42 R.I.'s decision to become a teacher--Spalding School for Handicapped Children--no taste for education courses at Beloit College, advised by Professor McGranahan to skip them and concentrate on college teaching

15:53 R.I.'s experience with polio, epidemic of 1930--unfulfilled desire to dance--began to read more, gifts from aunt--importance of Spalding School

20:09 Choice of college influenced by handicap--family tour of Beloit in 1934, met President Mowrer

23:15 Extent of handicap not as serious then

26:46 Further comments on ancestors fleeing Germany to avoid conscription

28:42 Funny political background--grandfather Irrmann as Democratic Cook County commissioner

42:27 The college and the community during the 1930s--influence or the First Congregationnl Church--intellectual aristocracy--importance of the basketball team

47:58 Beloit College expelled from the basketball conference

48:59 Recollection of black students on campus during the 1930's--Judge Edith Sampson in Chicago--George Hilliard--Eddie May--only discrimination from tuition costs--non-discriminatory tradition

57:05 R.I. as a graduate student at Harvard for an M.A., one year for $1300, influential professors

1:00:11 Introduction

1:00:17 Further comments on Harvard years--lecture series, John Mason Brown

1:03:47 Going to Indiana University from Harvard, financial reasons--good years at Indiana

1:07:43 Influential professors at Indiana--Warmoth in political theory--F. Lee Benz in modern European history--lecture techniques

1:12:20 Getting a teaching job--first at Denison University--then, back to Beloit as a professor

1:18:36 The Beloit history department in the mid-1940s--interdepartmental relationships--Great Books course--Wisconsin Conference on Christianity and Scholarship, interdisciplinary course--interdisciplinary activities as after World War II

Clem Imhoff interviews Dr. Robert Irrman on November 4, 1976 in Beloit, Wisconsin. Irrmann discusses his family background in New York State and Chicago, his decision to teach, his experience with polio, and life as student at Beloit College in 1930s. Irrman also discusses Black students at the college in the 1930s, his experience at Harvard and at Indiana for graduate school, teaching at Beloit, the liberal humanist philosophy of Beloit College and the financial difficulty of the college. Other topics covered are the relationship between Beloit College and Fairbanks-Morse and Beloit College and Beloit Iron Works.

This oral history is part of a series of tape-recorded interviews conducted in 1976 by Clem Imhoff for the Beloit Bicentennial Commission with Black and white residents of Beloit, Wisconsin, concerning migration of Blacks to the city from Kentucky and Mississippi after World War I and their lives before and after the move. Included in the interviews are references to employment and labor problems at Fairbanks-Morse, education, churches, the Women's Community Club, Beloit College, and the local chapter of the NAACP. For more information, see the original finding aid: http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi/f/findaid/findaid-idx?c=wiarchives;view=reslist;subview=standard;didno=uw-whs-tape00637a

11:42 R.I.'s decision to become a teacher--Spalding School for Handicapped Children--no taste for education courses at Beloit College, advised by Professor McGranahan to skip them and concentrate on college teaching

15:53 R.I.'s experience with polio, epidemic of 1930--unfulfilled desire to dance--began to read more, gifts from aunt--importance of Spalding School

20:09 Choice of college influenced by handicap--family tour of Beloit in 1934, met President Mowrer

23:15 Extent of handicap not as serious then

26:46 Further comments on ancestors fleeing Germany to avoid conscription

28:42 Funny political background--grandfather Irrmann as Democratic Cook County commissioner

42:27 The college and the community during the 1930s--influence or the First Congregationnl Church--intellectual aristocracy--importance of the basketball team

47:58 Beloit College expelled from the basketball conference

48:59 Recollection of black students on campus during the 1930's--Judge Edith Sampson in Chicago--George Hilliard--Eddie May--only discrimination from tuition costs--non-discriminatory tradition

57:05 R.I. as a graduate student at Harvard for an M.A., one year for $1300, influential professors

1:00:11 Introduction

1:00:17 Further comments on Harvard years--lecture series, John Mason Brown

1:03:47 Going to Indiana University from Harvard, financial reasons--good years at Indiana

1:07:43 Influential professors at Indiana--Warmoth in political theory--F. Lee Benz in modern European history--lecture techniques

1:12:20 Getting a teaching job--first at Denison University--then, back to Beloit as a professor

1:18:36 The Beloit history department in the mid-1940s--interdepartmental relationships--Great Books course--Wisconsin Conference on Christianity and Scholarship, interdisciplinary course--interdisciplinary activities as after World War II

1:31:30 Mrs. Neese as an artist, sales of watercolors donated to the College--story about the finding of “Tomb of the Poet”

1:35:16 Building up the geology and onthropology departments under President Kroneis--decline of the anthropology fund--flush times for Beloit College

1:38:00 Financial difficulties for Beloit College--first in the early 1950s--flush years of the sixties--problems again by the end of the 1960s--Beloit not first choice for many students

1:43:26 The relationship between Beloit College and Fairbanks-Morse--Morse-Ingersoll Hall

1:46:51 Beloit Iron Works and Beloit College--anonymous gifts from Beloit Corporation--money-raising ability of President Martha Peterson

Language

English

Type

Sound

Original Item Format

Open reel tape

Digital Format

MP3

Publisher-Electronic

Wisconsin Historical Society

Rights

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